Wildkits vs. Trevians

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The old Evanston-New Trier rivalry.Over the years, it’s gone beyond healthy competitiveness, convincing Wildkits to reduce Trevians to a group of ethically shallow, rich kids, but this stigma we’ve built of them may just be a distraction from acknowledging our own privileges. From those who take magnets off their cars during soccer games to the minds behind the ¨NT starter pack¨ memes, it’s fair to say that many of us enjoy poking fun at our age-old enemies. However, it seems that we use this rivalry as a segway to express our “ethical superiority.”

It is common knowledge that, unlike New Trier, we share a building with people of varying races, political stances and socioeconomic statuses. Our student body is 44% white and 41% low income while New Trier´s is 85% white and 4% low income. To many, this is enough to put ourselves on higher moral ground. But in reality, with every confute of their capacity to be ¨woke¨, based mostly on their privileged and white student body, we feed an extrinsic need to be viewed as well-rounded, morally conscious individuals. Yet, we too, have a considerably large population of sheltered kids with beach houses and nice cars, some of whom, probably share views just as close minded as we believe any NT student does.

Still, we tell ourselves there’s no way we’re as socially regressive as those Winnetka kids. We put so much effort into discrediting them that we forget to check our own prejudices and privileges. It makes you wonder. Are we ¨morally superior¨ universally or just by comparison to our skewed perception of New Trier students? Are we all really woke or do we just hide behind Evanston´s diverse demographic and hope that´ll speak for us? Maybe we just put up a front better than they do. So wake up, Wildkits! We can’t call out others if we don’t acknowledge our own privileges. To be conscious means to realize that we are not that much different than them — both Northshore, both nationally-ranked and both have some work to do when it comes to tolerance and how we define wokeness. But until then, let’s allow our school pride to be just that, instead of arrogance.